An autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating with minimal or no human input. In particular, an autonomous vehicle can observe its surrounding environment using a variety of sensors and can attempt to comprehend the environment by performing various processing techniques on data collected by the sensors. Given knowledge of its surrounding environment, the autonomous vehicle can identify an appropriate motion path through such surrounding environment.
In some implementations, an autonomous vehicle can include one or more vehicle systems which may be subject to one or more thermal constraints. For example, an autonomous vehicle can include a computing system configured to assist with autonomous operation, and the computing system can include processors, memory devices, or other components which may need to be operated at or below one or more temperature thresholds in order for the computing system to operate reliably. In some implementations, such a computing system may require a cooling system configured to remove heat from the computing system in order for the computing system to operate below any applicable temperature thresholds.
However, the cooling requirement for an autonomous vehicle may vary depending upon the type of systems installed (e.g., computing systems, power systems, energy storage systems, vehicle control systems, etc.), the operating conditions for the vehicle, or other factors. One approach to meeting the cooling requirements for an autonomous vehicle is to incorporate a stand-alone cooling system capable of providing the maximum amount of cooling required for all vehicle systems under all operating conditions. However such a cooling system may add unnecessary weight, occupy a large volume of space, and may be inefficient under some operating conditions.